We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history. It has never happened before and it can’t possibly happen again. Albert Bates, author of The Financial Collapse Survival Guide and Cookbook, brings you along on his personal journey.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Ground Up

" This is where biochar
is today in agriculture. Its a better mousetrap in the midst of a huge rodent
epidemic and still, most people can’t even buy any.
"

Ever since William Woods, Wim Soembroek, Bruno Glazer and
other dirt dorks started revealing the miraculous capacities of terra preta do indios, the dark earths
of the Amazon, the story of climate change and our species impending extinction
became all about agriculture. By the time Johannes Lehmann and Stephen Joseph
published Biochar for Environmental
Management, it was clear (and validated by excellent science) that
reinvigorating agriculture with ancient practices involving biochar, taken to
scale, could restore Earth’s atmosphere to pre-industrial health.

Native stewardship of the Americas was all but invisible to the
sensibilities of European conquerors. Worse, 500 years of unremitting ethnic
cleansing destroyed unknowable riches of ecological knowledge, along with much
of the rich, deep philosophy of how humans can inhabit Earth as citizens, not pirating
rapists.

We confess we were among those who took the pilgrimage to
Brazil, returned baptized in the soil, and predicted that billions of hectares
would soon be biochared, drawing gigatons of carbon into eternal sequestration.

So what happened?

Decades on, you still can’t buy biochar fertilizers in most
garden stores. The entrepreneurial landscape is littered with the corpses of
companies that ramped up biochar production, or packaged microbial mixes, and
then couldn’t find enough buyers to pay the office rent, never mind their
payroll.

A few gardeners and farmers made their own, tried it out and
were sold. They evangelized their neighbors. But the vast majority were
skeptics or took clueless Master Gardener courses and took no notice. While
those with relatively good soils, typical of the temperate zones, saw 40
percent productivity gains, those in the tropics and other areas of poor soils,
saw gains of 400 percent and more. And yet, the nascent industry continued to
tank.

This past week we have been hosting a workshop at The Farm
Ecovillage Training Center called Biochar
from the Ground Up. We are taking biochar up from the ground and putting it
to other uses that might have better business potential.

Over and over again during
the workshop we heard that “farmers are conservative,” “nobody is going to pay
for something that takes years to show its worth,” and “unless you spend the
time to make it, you won’t even be able to get any.” This is where biochar is
today in agriculture. Its a better mousetrap in the midst of a huge rodent
epidemic and still, most people can’t even buy any.

Because we are busy with the workshop we
can’t easy cut out the time to pen a blog, so we taped (feebly, using a
collection of devices such as phones and voice recorders) a segment of one talk
we gave during the week.Enjoy.

5 comments:

One of the things that struck me, and it has movement in how it things can cascade, is to "keep on keepin' on" with regards to any, not just climate change, but all that affects how we move forward. I volunteer at an Arboretum in Nevada and it bothered me enough to mention to the head horticulturist that the throwing away of leaves to keep areas "clean" were counter-productive and we needed to find a way to retain this resource and make all volunteers aware of the valuableness of leaves even in the built environment. I did this with humbleness and a little trepidation that I was overstepping my boundaries. It just so happens that he had read a study from an Missouri Arboretum that detritus (leaves and twigs) were essential for a healthy forest (imagine that, I thought self righteously). So slowly, the focus is shifting in these embedded institutions, and, judging from my reactions, we must foster patience and humbleness as we move forward. All our lives depend on it.

Are you aware of any studies on the economics of energy/biochar cogeneration? Mauna Loa Macadamia uses the pyrolysis gases from macadamia nut shells to generate process heat, but stops short of combusting the carbon so as to leave biochar, which is then sold. I have purchased that biochar through Pacific Biochar.

For conventional BECCS the expense of capturing the CO2 from exhaust gases would greatly reduce the value of the power obtained by the carbon combustion, not to mention the loss of the potential sales value of the biochar. It would seem that BECCS by using biochar as the capture method could already be commercially viable, especially in the tropics.

We have found high carbon boiler ash to contain sufficient biochar to make its use worthwhile. The source is untreated sawmill waste and the presence of some ash and unburnt chip is not a problem for our purposes. It is very affordable and the heat is certainly used.

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Albert Bates, author of The Post Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, brings you along on his personal journey.

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